


i had a dream, it split the screen

by AnnCherie



Category: Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: COMIC CANON AGE BRUCE, Gen, Medication, Mental Instability, Non-Graphic Violence, Psychosis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-02-28 18:07:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23011486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnCherie/pseuds/AnnCherie
Summary: Fighting crime in Gotham doesn't prepare Dick Grayson for the battles inside his mind.(a prequel to Titans s1)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 55





	i had a dream, it split the screen

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by a post on tumblr @tammirants wrote regarding Dick being likely to have schizoaffective/bipolar type disorder
> 
> This is definitely heavy on talk of medication (since we all know Dick Grayson hasn't stepped foot in a therapist's office after Bruce adopts him), so if that bothers or triggers you, be warned. I'm coming from my own experiences with bipolar and medication and I just don't need the argument, kthx.
> 
> (Speaking of, Bruce in the comics is only 12yrs older than Dick and that's the only Bruce I'll accept, no you cannot change my mind.)

A particularly nasty batch of Scarecrow’s weaponized hallucinogens fill the air around Dick Grayson before he can even hold his breath, let alone get out of range. He’s green then with only a year of training, barely a teenager (if one could call a thirteen year old sidekick vigilante an average teenager). The antidote Bruce and Lucius Fox whip up works, but Dick still sees what he worst fears in his nightmares after… 

_ … his parents falling, over and over… Bruce telling him that it’s Dick’s fault the rope broke, his fault for not catching them... _

Except the nightmares don’t stop when he wakes. There’s no relief in the light of dawn like there should be; he still sees the horrible visions around him as he punches the training bag. He still hears the words in his head as if Bruce is right there. Reminding himself over and over that it’s  _ not real _ doesn’t help. Bruce notices the difference in behavior around him. He asks Dick what’s wrong, threatens to take him off duty, but when Dick falsely promises he’ll talk about it when he’s ready Bruce resentfully acquiesces. Dick has a feeling Alfred had something to do with that.

Getting away with lying to Batman is its own kind of high.

Slowly the visual episodes begin to lapse, getting farther and farther between. Relief sinks in deeper than he even expected, and his attitude brightens enough that Alfred comments on it. Dick shrugs and gives a quip about preteen mood swings, and he swears he can see a smile quirk on Bruce’s lips.

  
  
  


* * *

  
  


Of course the healthiness doesn’t last. Maybe if he wasn’t Robin, if the concussions didn’t keep coming, or the criminals of Gotham didn’t reappear with crazier and crazier devices over two years, he’d have had a chance. It’s what Dick gives up every time he goes on patrol and helps Bruce like he has to. Like he wants to. He has to train to kill Tony Zucco, doesn't he? So he trains and pushes out the scenes of his parents and Bruce, pretends they aren’t there talking to him like they seem to be, fights like hell in the training room even when Bruce is gone for Justice League business.

One night in the training ring, the bruising of his fists against the bag isn’t enough to keep everything out. Bruce is there, taunting him.  _ “You think you can kill Zucco? You’re a fifteen year old kid who can’t even control his own mind. You’re weak.” _

_ “Shut up!” _ Dick yells, kicking the bag hard enough now that he’s both broken its chain and more than likely injured his foot. “You’re not right about everything, Bruce. I can kill him and I will.”

“Dick?”

He whips around to see Donna in the door, face full of concern. He looks back at Bruce, who isn’t there. The cave is empty, and his secret is out.

There isn’t a reason he shouldn’t have expected her, and that makes it worse. His throat becomes so tight he can’t breathe, wishing that she was more confused than she looks. But if she isn’t confused, then… “Are you real?”

The brunette’s face falls, big brown eyes wide as she nods and rushes over to him, pulling him in a hug. She’s squeezing too tight, that super strength giving her an advantage. While he’s trying to use every ounce of training he has to control his emotions and not cry, when she pulls back he finds his eyes have gotten misty.

“What’s going on?”   
  


“I’m hallucinating,” he immediately replies. Anger rushes at full force when he realizes part of the squeezing involved tying her lasso in a way he’d been too emotional to notice. “Goddammit, Donna,  _ are you serious _ ?”

She bit her lip, but stayed stubborn. “Yes. Batman was worried enough that he _asked Diana for help_. She enlisted me, and… I owe her. You’d do the same in reverse if you thought I was in trouble.”

“I’m not in trouble,” he says, gritting his teeth through the pain of the lasso.

Donna only looks somber. “I get that you believe that enough you’re not completely burning, but that just scares me even more.”

“What the hell do you want me to do about it anyway?”

“You need someone to talk to. Apparently someone who isn’t in your life if you’ve been hiding this. Even if it’s wrapped up in some cover story.”

Dick scoffs in a harsh way he doesn’t show Donna often. “In Gotham? The psychiatrists here aren’t known for being sane themselves, and even when they are they like to use Arkham as a cure-all.”

“Anywhere.” Donna sighs in response, touching his cheek. The skin contact makes him flinch, but as angry as he is at her he relaxes into it anyway. There’s something inhuman about her kindness when she chose to be soft with him in a sisterly way, the kind that he couldn’t push away. “We all love you, Dick. So much. I’m not sure everything you’re going through and I’d never force you to tell me the details.”

“Great,” he deadpans. “That might be reassuring if I didn’t know you’re going to tattle on me.”

Donna looks down at the floor briefly before back to him again with sad resolve. “I have to, you know that. Hate me if you want to.”

He wonders if in a different situation she might have thrown the “older, smarter, prettier” line in his face.

“They aren’t even on a mission, are they?” Dick asks rhetorically. There’s no way Bruce would give him a chance to run after the truth came out. He huffs when Donna doesn’t answer and snaps. “Take your lasso off me.”

She does reluctantly. He storms off towards his room but isn’t followed. Bruce and Alfred don’t come out, Diana isn’t anywhere, he’d almost think he had the house to himself if he didn’t know better. Dick might have tried to sneak out, but knew the mansion had to be in protocol mode for a situation like this.

He’s left alone for a long time, and he has to admit he’s torn between relief and anger at Bruce for not comforting him immediately. Finally he decides to go searching because waiting is too excruciating, so finds the vent opening to the Batcave they kept for emergencies.

Yells raise from underneath in a way super hearing isn’t needed, and he can tell now why Bruce was delayed. Poking his head through the slits of an air opening, he manages to spy from a distance. Wonder Woman is there like he expected (it was her voice he had heard first), but he hadn’t realized Superman was there as well. Apparently wrapped up in the fight, the Kryptonian hadn’t heard Dick immediately.

“He needs professional help, you must know that!” Diana passionately yells, arguing in a way she doesn’t often with Bruce; but when they fight, they  _ fight _ .

“You think I have any place to tell him that?” Bruce growls in return.

"You're his guardian." Superman responds. Dick knew his true identity too, but somehow when facing the the magnitude of an angry Diana and the stubbornness of Bruce, the innocuous name of Clark Kent never seemed to fit.

"He'll call me a hypocrite and he'd be right."

"And Hera forbid you're not the only right one in the room!" Diana retorts. 

Now Superman sighs, raising his hands up before things can get worse. "Diana, Bruce, come on. Let's refocus. Bruce, if you really can't talk to him, then try Alfred. If he can't get the help he needs, and maybe even if he does, you know he needs to stop. He's just a fifteen year old kid."

_ Stop _ . Stop being Robin, stop training, stop giving his all every night? Dick feels his stomach drop and the need to throw caution to the wind, hack protocol, and steal another Wayne car again. Betrayal from Donna he can handle even if he’s furious, but the sting of Superman thinking he was just some kid that couldn’t fight hurt more than he thought it would.

Surprisingly enough, Bruce says, "I can't take this from him. He'd run off and try to continue on his own and get killed. It's too late."

Batman doesn’t believe in him either then, confirming some of the words his hallucinations threw at him.  _ He was weak. He wouldn’t make it by himself. He’d never find relief against his parents' death.  _

But at least Bruce understands the gravity of trying to take that away.

Wonder Woman does not. She shakes her head and makes a loud disapproving sound before leaving the Batcave with a slam of the giant metal doors she incorrectly pries open and shut. They'll need repair.

In her absence, Bruce unknowingly unsettles Dick and hangs his head. He was so unused to seeing anything but stoicism, worry, or the occasional happiness that he had forgotten his adopted guardian was human. There wasn’t anger on Bruce’s face, there was  _ guilt. _

Superman-- no, Clark this time, rests a hand on his shoulder that Dick is shocked isn't shrugged away. 

"You raised him by what you thought would help best at the time. You’re young too."

Dick thinks almost thirty-- well twenty-nine-- is plenty old enough to make decisions on parenting. His own parents were younger than that when they had him. With a sharp pain in his chest, he realizes Bruce is now older than they were before they died. It makes him want to gag, and this time Superman catches the sound. The alien doesn’t have to say anything, Bruce was too quick to follow his every movement after now years of training together.

“I’ll meet you in your room, Dick.” Bruce says in such a firm tone that he listens, only because the anger boiling inside him makes him ready for a fight.

When they’re finally face to face, Dick chokes. The anger stops immediately, faced with the real version of his waking fears, and he’s frozen in a way that startles him. Bruce looks a little lost at the reaction, probably expecting an angry rant as well, and looks down for a brief second in a way unlike him. Putting his hand in his pockets, finally Bruce spoke. “You shouldn’t have kept this from me.”

“Did I compromise any mission?” Dick asks sarcastically. The anger is back.

Bruce narrows his eyes, but not in irritation. It’s initial confusion, followed by more guilt. “That’s not-- that’s not the point, Dick. I’m your guardian, and I’m supposed to look after your health-- physical  _ and _ mental.”

“Yeah, well, who do you think caused it? Just Crane?” Dick lashes out. The intake of breath and hurt-- on the same man who was  _ Batman _ ’s face-- makes Dick realize what he’s done too late. “I’m sorry, that’s not-- I didn’t mean--,”

“You’re right,” Bruce says. His voice is rough. “I am the one who exposed you to all of this.”

“No, Bruce,” Dick firmly replies. “That was Zucco.”

Quiet for more than a few seconds, Bruce surveys Dick’s room before asking, “Is that who you see?”

“Yes,” Dick lies, hanging onto the hope that Donna hadn’t told them the details like she had mentioned. Maybe it’s stupid, the holding on of being a martyr, but he can’t see Bruce like this. “My parents too.”

Bruce gives a heavy sigh, nodding. “If you want to stay Robin, things need to change. Immediately.”

Perking up despite himself, having been almost certain that despite what the older man had told Wonder Woman he was still going to take the title away from Dick, he asks, “Like what?”

“You’ll be transparent with me this time.” Bruce orders. “And you’ll take medication with monthly blood levels”

Dick scowls, but the emotional man is gone and transformed back into Batman. There’s no arguing. That’s the end of it.

And the medication seems to help, from what Dick can tell. By the time he’s so used to taking it he forgets he ever had a problem, Bruce has stopped taking levels and trusts him enough to send him to San Francisco with his own team. 

  
  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Throughout the years he still takes the pills out of habit. Notices that Donna notices. The Titans team grows and changes with time. Roy comes and goes. Hawk and Dove find them. Donna leaves for Themyscira for a period. Garth joins. 

Things are good, even with his closest teammate Donna gone. So good that he can’t remember they ever weren’t. Being in San Francisco, away from Gotham and its overbearing depth of darkness and violence was beautiful.

He can’t pinpoint the exact day when he stopped taking the medicine, but he definitely felt a mood swing the first few days. Excuse after excuse convinces him it’s fine, a brief depression wouldn’t kill him anyway. Patrol had been light, all the team had needed to do was train; so he rests for a few days, occasionally heaves himself out of bed to put on a front, then goes back to sleep. The days drag, until they don’t.

Normalcy feels amazing. He has energy again, enough that he doesn't need to sleep as much. Clearer than ever, he catches up on weeks of slacked projects. Sure, he might get snappy sometimes, but at least he wasn’t in a slump. Dawn comments on his increasing violence toward criminals, but he just shrugs and says he’s tired of criminals creating victims. Hank high-fives him for the comment. Dawn rolls her eyes and looks to Garth, who only shrugs.

  
  


A month passes before it’s Hank that stops him from punching another man bloody. Maybe it’s the change in setting that concerns the former jock. The two of them aren’t masked up in suits, they’re simply recouping from a mission at a nearby bar. Dick doesn’t realize it was Hank pulling him back until he’s already struck his teammate in the jaw too. Upon recognizing the face and then surveying the situation, he runs out before the police arrive.

“What the  _ fuck _ , Dick?” Hank yells, following him on foot and nearly as fast.

“You saw him trying to force that girl to give her his number,” Dick replies, stopping in his tracks to turn around and try to reason with Hank.

“So you tell him to stop and avoid a fight at the same time,” Hank argues, throwing his hands up in the air. “You don’t fucking punch him before you say anything and then  _ keep _ punching him!”

“What, are you on his side?” he scoffs. “Sexual harassment is just okay with you?”

“Of  _ course not _ ,” Hank replies, his eyes narrow and searching. “Fuck, man, Dawn is right. Something is wrong with you.”

“Fuck you too,” Dick snaps, storming off.

  
  
  


Bruce arrives at the Tower the same night without any warning, waiting in the armchair in Dick’s room like he belongs there. Dick is angrier than he’s ever been about his own team betraying him, treating him like some sidekick that needed his Daddy and not the fucking goddamn leader of them, and he isn't afraid to show it. 

“Who the hell told you to come here?” Dick demands without any pretense of sheepishness. “What, did Garth tell Aquaman?”

Bruce is still and nonreactive to Dick’s behavior.  _ Goddamn stoicism.  _ The Bat still speaks.  “Can’t I just check on you myself?”

“Don’t fucking bullshit me,” Dick snaps.

“I don’t need to, you do it to yourself quite well,” Bruce responds with a calm smirk. “What, you thought you could go this long as a leader and not crack under the weight? You were a sidekick for a reason, Dick.”

“Fuck you,” Dick retaliates. “You’re the one who needed a twelve year old to beat bad guys.”

“I didn’t need you,” the man laughs callously. “I felt guilty your parents died and I couldn’t stop it from the crowd as Bruce Wayne. Call me sentimental.”

Devastation cut through his anger and he left the room, barely able to breathe. Fuck Batman. The man could leave through the same window he probably snuck in through. Dick finds Garth in the living quarters and corners him on the couch, ignoring the look of shock that Garth seems to think will work on someone trained by one of the world’s greatest detectives.

“Are you fucking serious?” Dick demands.

Garth stands up at the attack despite still acting bewildered, and dares to ask, “What-- what’s wrong, Dick?”

“Don’t fucking act like you don’t know,” Dick half yells, and ignores that Dawn and Hank are now in the living room too. “You’re the only other person who has access to communication with Batman. We’re fucking adults now and you ran to Aquaman to tattle on me?”

“What are you--,”

Dick goes to land a punch but Garth dodges it in time. Training actually paid off for the fish it seems. Hank rushes forward, as does Dawn, and even though Dick is good he still can’t fight all three of them in one room for longer than thirty minutes.

  
  
  
  


When he wakes up, he expects to be in the Batcave, put in some ridiculous timeout. Instead he sees Donna staring down at him in the Tower’s medbay, pushing his hair out of his face. He goes to sit up but is strapped, and Donna doesn’t look like that’s a concern to her.

“Don’t lecture me, he fucking--,” Dick starts, but Donna puts a warm hand on his arm.

“Calm down, little bird,” she tells him. Unlike the rest of them, she never showed her tiredness on her face, but her hair is undone and her clothes look wrinkled in ways she usually disliked. So she had been watching him, back from Themyscira .

He wonders how long he’s been made unconscious.“Let me go, then we’ll talk.”

She looks sad as she quips, “Take a small sedative and sure.”

“Why are  _ you _ treating me like some Arkham patient?”

Donna sighs. “Trying to harm your entire team will put a damper on trust in your sanity, Dick.”

Before he can lash out again, she shakes her head. “They don’t know anything, I didn’t tell them. I guess they didn’t dare reach out to Batman after everything so they called me.”

Well at least there was that.

“When did you stop taking your medication?” she asks, not accusingly but not lightly either.

Dick shakes his head and scoffs. “What does that matter? I’ve been fine for years. No hallucinations. Anyone beating up criminals for a living is going to get a temper, okay? I’ll work on it.”

Narrowing her big brown eyes, she looks toward the window for a moment. The weather is gloomy, not an unusual occurrence for San Francisco but also nothing to lighten the mood. “I love you, Boy Wonder, but you’re sick right now. Batman wasn’t here. None of the team ever reached out to him.”

“They’re lying,” he scoffs.

“They all offered to tell you the same thing using my lasso,” Donna says. Her frown isn’t often sad like this. “And even if they hadn’t, he hasn’t been on earth for days. He’s up in the Justice League tower with Diana and Superman.”

Thinking about the several ways he could escape from this bed, he still hasn’t come up with a good contingency plan on how to defeat a trained demigoddess while compromised by the time Donna speaks. “Tell me what he said when he was here.”

“You think I’m having psychotic episodes.”

“Humor me.”   
  


Dick scoffs, thinking he’d rather get hit with another round of fear gas than admit what had made him snap, but Donna nudges his arm. “It’s me, Dick. Tell me.”

“I’m just a sidekick, not a leader,” he confesses with resignation, knowing that if he’s still strapped to a bed it’s not unrealistic that she’ll use her lasso on him anyway out of misplaced worry. “And that he didn’t need me, he just felt guilty about not saving my parents.”

“And you really think Batman would give you the Tower, the tools, and the connections of various superheroes all to lead a team if he thought your capabilities only amounted to sidekick?” Donna asks. “You’re a logical person, Dick. Think that through.”

Quiet seems like the best option when the weight atop his chest felt like it was going to crush his lungs and asphyxiate him. The vitals machine he hadn’t cared to pay attention to until now started beeping. Donna didn’t pay it attention, still staring Dick down in a way only a handful of people could manage to do. “Also, I seem to remember a few years ago when you were seventeen and telling me how you had just been offered formal adoption papers to sign. If he didn’t  _ want _ you, you’d be just another foster kid that left when you were eighteen.”

Silence gives his racing thoughts room, but Donna waits with him.

“Nothing makes sense.” Dick breathes out. 

She nods, her beautiful brown eyes misty at his words. He doesn’t like to see her cry. “Are you actually real?”

“Always,” Donna tells him, kissing his forehead. “I brought your medication with my suitcases. You’ll have to deal with a bossy sibling for awhile. Older, smarter, prettier.”

Even though it feels foreign, he manages the first smile he’s had in months.

  
  
  
  


*

  
  
  


Things get better once more. Even though she never admits to it, Dick knows Donna must have given some sort of warning to the team because not even Garth mentions the incident again. He thinks about having his own team meeting and owning up to it, but he wouldn’t know where to begin. Maybe it’s his inability to be vulnerable with anyone in his adult life other than Donna and Alfred, or maybe it’s the guilt itself, but he lets the subject go untouched for weeks until he finally approaches Garth in the frame of his bedroom door.

“Can I come in?” Dick asks, less confident than he wants.

Garth only watches for a second then smirks, more than likely knowing where this is going but giving Dick leeway. “Didn’t know you swung that way, but I guess you _are_ an acrobat. We’ll have to keep our romance a secret from the team, though, don’t want any jealousy.”

“Serious,” Dick tells him, and Garth sighs and nods. Dick shuts the door behind him. Sure, Donna could probably hear if she was listening, but she had a tendency of tuning them all out with music to give them privacy-- and her some semblance of normality. At least Dawn or Hank wouldn’t hear. “I owe you an apology.”

“Honestly, Dick, I don’t need one,” Garth replies with a shrug and same casual nature. “You’re not that person, and whatever happened you’ve obviously managed to fix it. We’re good.”

“Okay,” Dick awkwardly says, not sure what else he’s supposed to say. Apologies weren’t exactly something Batman had trained him on.

“Actually wait,” Garth pipes up as Dick goes to leave. He nods to the door so Dick closes it again, wondering what part of himself that he hates Garth will throw back at him.

Garth doesn’t throw anything back at him, but he does throw him off. “You’re not in love with Donna, are you?”

“No,” he says, his face probably showing distaste considering Garth’s quick grin. “She’s basically my sister.”

“So she’s completely single,” Garth says slowly, feeling out Dick’s reaction in a very obvious way.

Apparently he’ll owe Garth another apology in the future, he thinks as he shrugs and tells Garth to ask her himself. There were secret identities that could be shared between teammates but lesbian was not one of them. Even if he  _ is _ still a little bitter Donna had dated Babs before him.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


When Garth dies, Dick knows it’s his fault. He could have stopped Garth from chasing Donna, let alone  _ should have. _ When Donna comes back to the Tower, sobbing and broken with the grief of having someone die in your arms that Dick that he knows all too intimately, he promises himself he’ll kill the person responsible just like he once promised to kill Zucco. 

When the other Titans agree, despite the severity and implications of the plans, he knows he’s right. 

Meeting Joey throws a wrench in their plan.

Then Dick finds Donna, his  _ family _ , bleeding out and all but dying at the hands of Slade and the wrench is taken care of. He’ll kill Deathstroke himself. 

Except life has never been that easy for him. Dick kills Joey and the blood of just a teenager isn’t something he can ever wash away. The Titans disband and he’s the last to leave the Tower. He doesn’t take his medication with him.

If he dies in a fight because of his own mind then he’s getting what he deserves.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


Depression hits first again, just like last time, but now he has the cover up excuse of grief. Apparently old habits die hard, because Bruce leaves him alone to bear it, other than still taking him on patrol. At least he’s an adult now, used to the behavior.

Bruce takes him off patrol not long after, claiming to be worried about the violence that he had taught Dick himself. It’s laughable really, but Dick doesn’t laugh, and instead slams the Cave door behind him.

Then, when he’s at his worst (something relative until hindsight), he lets Zucco die in front of him. Watches as his body gets riddled with bullet after bullet in an almost cartoonish way, held up by some unseen force before finally falling lifeless to the ground when the Maroni’s were done. 

He enjoys it.

For once, that’s enough of a wakeup call.

Confessing everything to Alfred, knowing Bruce was listening, he collapses with self hatred. After screaming every hateful thought he’d had about Bruce when faced with the man who had brought him into this world, into Gotham, into the idea that he could play God with people’s lives; he left. Without realizing it, he drove to a once familiar apartment and parked outside with hesitation for his car.

Jim Gordon answers the door. Babs hasn't lived here in years, but Jim welcomes him in despite knowing his involvement with the Zucco case. Family ties ran too deep in a place like Gotham. Or maybe it’s just the desperate situation of Dick reaching out in such an intimate way that sways him.

“I can’t be here anymore,” Dick tells him, pressing against the back of his neck with his sweaty hands. “I can’t be in Gotham. I can’t be around  _ him _ .”

“I know,” the Commissioner nods. Maybe he thinks "him" is Zucco, maybe he knows it's Bruce. Either way the man gives a kinder look than Bruce ever could. “But you won’t survive as a civilian. Not anymore.”

So Jim offers him a way out of the costume in the way someone would offer a smoker a nicotine patch.  _ Police officer _ . Dick doesn’t know how to turn it down without being offensive, but his face must say it all when Jim laughs. “Relax, kid, you’ll be a detective in no time with your smarts and skill set.”

Less than graciously, but still thankful, Dick accepts the handout and moves far from Gotham to Detroit. This time his medicine stays with him.

  
  
  


* * *


End file.
